Here are how many glasses of water you should drink to reduce the chances of heart attacks

We know that drinking lots of water throughout the day is good for our health. In fact, while there are drinks that can cause the formation of kidney stones, the intake of water allows the right hydration for the correct functioning of the body’s metabolic mechanisms. The characteristics of the water we drink can vary.

We have seen, for example, that there can be risks in drinking tap water, without having checked whether it is soft or hard water. Numerous studies are highlighting the enormous, previously unknown, benefits of this molecule on our body. For example, here are how many glasses of water you should drink to reduce the likelihood of heart attacks.

Drinking too much hurts

Living beings are in a dynamic and changing balance with the external and internal environment of the body. These balances are very fragile and it doesn’t take much to change their direction. Water makes up about 80% of our body, but this percentage can vary based on age and the presence of body fat. In particular, increasing age and obesity lead to a decrease in the percentage of water in the body. We have said that drinking lots of water is good for the body. However, drinking too much of it can be bad for your health.

Exceeding the quantities, in fact, there is a decrease in sodium in the blood, a condition called hyponatremia. The kidneys struggle to excrete excess water through the urine. This situation is quite well known in endurance running sports (marathons and half marathons, for example). The resulting symptoms can be mild (vomiting, diarrhea, headache), but can lead to coma in the most severe cases.

So it’s okay to drink lots of water, but don’t overdo it.

Here are how many glasses of water you should drink to reduce the chances of heart attacks

In a paper recently presented to the European Society of Cardiology Congress (Dmitrieva N et al, 2021), researchers highlighted how, drinking the right amount of water can prevent or slow changes in the heart that lead to heart failure. As suggested by the first author of the study, the amount of water to drink varies between 1.6 and 2.1 liters for women, to 2 and 3 liters for men. With a glass of about 250 ml, 2 liters correspond to about 8 glasses of water.

When we drink less, the amounts of sodium increase (in the condition of hyponatremia presented in the previous paragraph, the situation was exactly the opposite). The body tries not to lose any more water and puts in place a series of mechanisms that can lead, in the long term, to heart failure. This problem is slowed down by increasing the amount of water in the body.

Higher sodium concentrations during middle age have been associated with both heart failure and left ventricular hypertrophy. Drinking water thus becomes an important preventive measure for the health of our heart.